call me beep me if you wanna reach me
by smileyfacebabe
Summary: Cora received a lot of texts from the people she had left behind in Beacon Hills. It was probably a very good thing Derek had gotten her unlimited data messaging. Sterek.


Author's Note: A story on Ao3 that I can't find now originally had Derek owning a cat named Kitty after the character in X-Men, but I liked the idea so I copied it. If that person has a problem with this, I will take this down. Otherwise I like it too much so bah.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, not even the idea for Kitty.

* * *

Cora regretted letting Derek get her a functioning phone almost immediately. They had picked it up the day before he left her down south and within two hours of him hopping back in his stupid Honda she was receiving texts from him, _at all hours_, nearly every day. It was like he was trying to make up for six years of (accidental) absence through a series of texts that included pictures and smiley face emoticons.

She honestly didn't know who to blame for the brother she had now. She figured it was a fifty-fifty chance of it either being Laura or Stiles or, what was most likely, some terrible combination of the two. Cora didn't remember Laura much, but she remembered laughter, loud and violent, and a teasing streak that was as mean as it was loving. Her chest seized up with longing, wishing for the hundredth time that Laura and Derek hadn't left without her, hadn't thought she was dead. She imagined Laura was very different after the fire, but she didn't care; she wanted that laughing, teasing older sister back.

She wanted her big brother back, too, actually, because what she had told Stiles and Peter had been correct; the man who dropped her off and bought her a phone wasn't the older brother she remembered. The fifteen year old Derek Hale never would have let her choose where she lived, never would have listened, never would have texted. He would have been "too cool" or something. And she missed that. The fifteen year old Derek was safe territory, because if he didn't care about her then it was okay to hate him, to loathe him for this whole thing.

Derek caring enough to take her all the way to her new pack, to buy her a phone and insist she had his number; Derek caring enough to text her at every opportunity and ask her how her day went…. Cora didn't know what to do about this Derek.

But what she regretted most about letting Derek get her a phone was having to endure endless texts about what _Stiles_ was doing with his day.

**stiles tried to convince me to get a cat**

_Go. To. Sleep. _It was three am and she didn't really know why she had to be informed that Stiles had tried to talk her older (moronic) brother into getting a cat, but apparently she did.

**I tried to tell him my apartment doesnt allow cats but I forgot he helped me pick out the apartment and apparently he purposefully picked one that allows pets because he thinks hes funny**

If that sentence made her grin, she would take that secret to her grave. _This is what you get for letting a teenager boss you around_, she told him. It wasn't until she had already sent the message that she realized she was supposed to be protesting this conversation. She had _school_ the next day, for Christ's sake. She groaned quietly at the ceiling and rolled over, burying her face under her pillow. Her phone buzzed, alerting her to an incoming text. She tried to ignore it. She caved before a full five minutes had passed.

**I don't let teenagers boss me around**

_Your alpha is literally a sixteen year old boy. Your argument is forever invalid. _

**shouldnt you be sleeping?**

She didn't even deem that text worthy of a response. Still, two days later she was entirely unsurprised to receive a picture message text from Derek, this time thankfully at five thirty pm and not am. She opened it, already knowing what it would be a picture of.

**meet kitty**

_You named your cat KITTY. Please tell me I was adopted. You're terrible._

**It's a reference to X-Men, because your brother's secretly the biggest nerd ever.**

Cora laughed, because she didn't have to be several hundred miles away in Beacon Hills to clearly see the fight that was probably breaking out over the phone. Stiles still made her want to punch him in the face (especially now that barely a day went by where she didn't receive a text with his name in it) but she could admit he had an amusing affect on her brother.

_You're both morons,_ she typed out. Her foster mother stuck her head in the room, calmly telling her it was dinner time. She was the only werewolf in the family Cora lived with and she ruled the house with an iron fist. Phones weren't allowed at the table, so she dropped it on her bed and took the stairs two at a time. Her phone buzzed throughout the entire dinner, which had everyone in the dining room giving her amused looks every time it went off.

"My brother's boyfriend is a lunatic," she explained, grimacing to hide her grin. They laughed, used to her behavior and her way of joking, but she wasn't quite sure if she was joking anymore. Stiles and Derek had a particular relationship that she was pretty sure no one but them understood. Half the time she was pretty sure they didn't understand it either, but whatever, she figured, to each his own. She had twelve texts in her inbox upon returning to her room after dinner and she sighed when she read them.

**I am not a moron cora shut up**

** If you're not a moron, why can't you use proper English?**

** this is proper english stiles **

** Capitalization is a big part of the language, Sourwolf. **

** dont call me that**

** Hush, Derek. ANYWAY, look, Cora! Kitty's so cute. Here's a picture of Derek cuddling his new pet!**

** Kitty keeps following Derek around the apartment; it's super cute. Look!**

** I regret letting you talk me into getting a cat stiles**

** You're lying, you love your new cat. In fact, I think you love her more than you do Cora. CORA, DEREK LOVES HIS CAT MORE THAN YOU. **

** that is a lie ignore him he is lying I dont love a cat more than you**

** sorry about stiles hes gone now hope you had a good day**

There was one more text that wasn't from Derek, from an unknown number. She was pretty sure she knew who's number it was before she opened it and she found, with a groan, that she was right.

Don't blame Derek, I stole this number from his phone when he wasn't looking.

_I hate you both_, she texted to both numbers, individually; _Now leave me alone so I can write my English paper_. Her phone was silent for the rest of the night, which was both nice and strangely lonely.

It wasn't long before the number of texts she received a week doubled, her phone chiming and buzzing every single day, even during class. After the second time her buzzing phone got her detention (it was a quote from the Muppets Treasure Island, okay, she had Googled it; Stiles thought he was so funny, but she wasn't laughing, okay, _she wasn't_) she put her foot down, dialing her brother's number. It was late afternoon, detention having just ended, and she expected him to answer. He had literally texted her not twenty minutes before, just a stupid frowny face emoticon to the news that she had gotten in trouble because of him and Stiles.

Derek didn't answer his phone. She didn't receive a single text message from either Stiles or her brother for three days. She was just beginning to visibly panic and her foster father was just promising that if they didn't answer in two days they would go to Beacon Hills and find out if something had happened when, out of the blue, she received a call from an unknown number. She waved her foster father away and walked outside, dropping down to sit on the front step to answer the phone.

"Hello?"

"Hello Cora," Lydia said. She sounded reluctant, distracted. A far away voice called her name and she sighed, loud and pointed. "Yes, yes, _I know_. Anyway, hello Cora, this is Lydia."

"Lydia… What's going on?"

Lydia sighed, like a mother frustrated with a rowdy child. "Your brother got into a little trouble with some hunters and got himself kidnapped. He wanted me to let you know he's okay, that his phone is broken but should be fixed soon. He didn't want you to worry."

"What happened to Stiles? Is he okay?"

"Stiles? Stiles is fine…"

From the somewhere behind the redhead Cora heard Scott say, "He texts her almost as much as Derek does. I don't know, okay, I don't _understand_ Stiles… I'm his best friend, yes, but no one can really understand Stiles, can they?"

Lydia hummed before making a noise of decision in the back of her throat. "Stiles' phone got run over when they took Derek," she explained, answering the question Cora hadn't asked. It made her bristle, but she let it slide.

Something tight and suffocating in her chest started to unwind at the news, however. She sighed, dropping her head to the side against the porch's railing. "Does this happen often?" She didn't mean to ask, but Cora had to know. It couldn't happen that often, she figured, when Lydia didn't immediately answer, because the boys were always texting her. They wouldn't have time to text her stupid pictures of their cat (because it was _their_ cat, not Derek's cat, okay, she really didn't know who they were trying to fool anymore) or quote the Muppets at her. It just wasn't possible, right?

"Lydia?"

Lydia sighed. "Something annoyingly supernatural in nature bothers us at least once a week and statistically we deal with something on the level of the kanima at least once a month. It's been a pain, but it's a bit easier now that everyone is talking and sharing information with everyone else, though. But no, no one has ever been kidnapped before."

"Stiles has," Scott said in the background.

"That was last semester," Lydia told him, "and I'm not counting it."

It felt like she'd been tackled, like her limbs were made of lead. "They text me every day," she whispered, not sure what she should be feeling. Anger that Derek (and Stiles) had hid this from her, worry, fear? Mostly it felt like she couldn't breathe, like she was sinking in a pool and didn't know which way was up. She felt a little bit like the time their family had gone to visit the zoo and all the animals had gone a little crazy and she had stared right in the tiger's eyes as it threw itself against the glass and roared.

Lydia made a noise that sounded a little bit like she wanted to throw her hands in the air and scream. "I've got to go, Cora," she said. There was a crash and someone shouting in the background. Cora thought about throwing up or fainting. "Derek will probably text you as soon as his phone is fixed. He'll be able to explain what happened better, since _someone_ kept me out of the loop _again_."

"Goodbye," Cora answer, reflexively, but Lydia had already hung up. She saved the number in her phone anyway and got up on shaky legs to go inside and tell her foster father that they didn't need to fly out to Beacon Hills.

"Everything alright, Cora?" He was human, so he couldn't have heard her conversation from upstairs. "You look a little green around the gills there, kid."

"Derek's, uh… Derek's friend called. His phone broke, which is why I haven't heard from him."

Her foster father grinned, looking relieved. "Oh good, Stiles called? That's good. He tell you what happened?"

"Uh, no. Not Stiles. Their friend, Lydia, called. Derek, he, uh… He got grabbed by some hunters. He's fine, she said, but his phone and Stiles' got smashed."

The grin dropped from her foster father's face faster than she could have imagined possible. He was a lot different from how she remembered her real father, but he was a little bit like how she remembered her grandfather being. Nice, warm, easy to talk to… The fury on his face was new, though.

"If they need us to come up there," he started, making to rise out of his armchair. Cora waved her hands, shook her head, throat tightening up. Her pack had never faced a threat like Beacon Hills and, even though it was selfish, she didn't want them to go anywhere near the town, not even to help her stupid older brother.

"It's fine. They've got it under control, I promise."

"If you say so," he said. His lips were pressed into a tight line, but they eased up a bit and gave her a small smile.

"I'm going to bed," she told him. It was barely six o' clock, but he didn't argue. He just nodded and she turned around, taking the stairs two at a time to her room. She fell asleep easily enough and when she woke it was nearly noon and she had three new texts messages in her inbox. She opened them with shaking fingers and wasn't surprised at all when none of them explained what had happened with the hunters.

Hey, can you send me the picture of Derek and Kitty curled up on the couch? They couldn't save any of the data from my old phone and I need it for my background.

**whatever you do do not give stiles that picture**

Nevermind, Kitty just curled up on Derek's shoulder and bit his ear and I took a picture of that.

She took a deep breath and shut her eyes as tightly as possible. She fought against the urge to ask, to demanded information and after a minute the curiosity went away. _Morons_, she texted them both. Stiles responded within a minute with the picture of the redish brown kitten curled up on her brother's shoulder, teeth clamped on his ear while Derek made a face somewhere between fond and annoyed. It was a pretty cute picture, she admitted as she made it Derek's new contact picture.

**ily2, brat**, Derek replied an hour later. Three hours after that he texted her a picture of Stiles sprawled out asleep on Derek's ratty yellow floral print couch, Kitty sprawled out on his stomach the opposite way, her head cradled against the teenager's hip and her back paws pressed against his chin. There was a bandage stretching across Stiles' nose and a bruise just visible on his collarbone where the cat's claws had dragged the shirt down. **sorry to worry you**, the caption said.

She briefly thought about ignoring their texts and showing them how it felt, but she knew they would have busted in her foster family's front door before the second day had ended. She wasn't built to handle the stress of living in the death trap that was Beacon Hills and Derek couldn't live without Stiles, she figured as she made the picture of Stiles' his contact picture. It wasn't that hard to understand, when you boiled it down to the bare facts. She needed safety, Derek needed Stiles, but that didn't mean Derek wouldn't give everything up to save her if she needed him to. He already had, after all.

As far as compromises went, pictures of them being morons with their kitten was a pretty good trade off for the low level of worry she was going to live with from now on. Especially since she could lord it over their heads when they finally got together that she had known from the start. She sent a stupid selfie picture of her in a Wonder Woman beanie at the mall later that day when she went out with her friends in retaliation, figuring that they should have some sort of picture for her contact information, since she had silly pictures of them.

"What's so funny?" Her friends wondered when she broke out laughing thirty minutes later in the food court.

"My brother and his boyfriend," she replied, easily. It was true enough.

Fuck yes, Wonder Woman. Dibs on being Batman.

**please tell stiles that if anyone is batman around here it is me and not him**

Tell Derek he doesn't get to be Batman. I don't want to be Superman!

**tell stiles scott is superman and that he can be robin**

_You're both ridiculous_, she texted them, grinning from ear to ear. When Halloween rolled around she texted them a picture of her Wonder Woman costume and wasn't surprised at all when Stiles responded with a picture of Derek in a Batman costume. She was even less surprised when Derek texted her a picture of Stiles' in a Robin costume, with Kitty clutched in his hands. Kitty had on a yellow and black cape with the red X-Men symbol in the center and her body was turned so that the camera could capture the cape perfectly. Stiles was grinning over Kitty's shoulder, his Robin mask tied on and his grin wider than the Grand Canyon.

_Stop mixing Marvel and DC,_ she told them.

Make me, was Stiles' oh so mature response.

**never**

She kind of couldn't wait for them to get their heads out of their asses and realize they were a match made in Hell. She was also ridiculously glad she didn't have to put up with their shenanigans in person, because if they were this annoyingly obvious about it over text messages they had to give out some pretty ridiculous body signals when they were there in person. She opened up a new text message conversation before she could think better of it, texting _Are they just as annoyingly obvious in real life as they are in text?_

**Yes. It's terrible. I hate them**, Lydia responded. **I**** swear to god, they would be so much easier to handle if they were just fucking like bunnies already.**

Barely a minute later she received a text from an unknown number, which just read, _**no they wouldnt they would be twice as unbearable**_

_** btw this is scott hi**_

Cora laughed so hard she choked on a Snickers bar and resigned herself to even more ridiculous texts blowing up her phone at all hours.

_Ten bucks says they get together before New Years,_ she texted back.

**Easter****,** Lydia argued.

_**Thanksgiving**_**, **Scott called.

Trick or treat, she thought gleefully to herself as she imagined Derek's face upon finding out that she had bet on his relationship with Stiles. Her foster father snorted sweet tea up his nose when she told him about her big brother, his boyfriend and their friends. It was the best she had felt in years, honestly, and even though she was sad that she would never receive a stupid selflie picture from Boyd or Erica it was nice, having a connection with her brother. She still regretted letting him get her a phone, though, especially when a text from Scott, complaining about how Derek and Stiles kept _**touching each other oh my god please make them stop its making me sick**_ landed her in detention again the very next week.

_Why are boys stupid?_

**If you think they're bad now you should have seem them at the start of this mess. Stiles couldn't stop moving for ten seconds, all Scott did was drool over Allison's hair and Derek kept lurking in the corner of Stiles' bedroom like he was going for the gold in the Freak Olympics.**

_At least they have us…?_

**They're just lucky they're pretty.**


End file.
